by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)
I shall forget you presently, my dear
Language: English
Our translations: GER
I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And [vows]1 were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far, -- Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking.
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View original text (without footnotes)1 Wheeler: "oaths"
Text Authorship:
- by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), no title, appears in Four Sonnets, no. 4, first published 1922 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Jack Hamilton Beeson (b. 1921), "I shall forget you presently", 1992 [ voice and piano ], from Two Millay Sonnets, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]
- by Scott Wheeler (b. 1952), "I shall forget you", 1990 [ soprano or mezzo-soprano and piano ], from Wasting the Night, no. 3, Scott Wheeler Music [sung text checked 1 time]
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- GER German (Deutsch) [singable] (Walter A. Aue) , "Ich werd' Dich bald vergessen, teurer Schatz", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2009-01-17
Line count: 14
Word count: 111